by Rick Hautala
He knew he couldn’t settle down and get involved in anything to distract himself, so he started going through the house again, pausing at each window and looking out to see if he caught sight of anyone out there, crouching in the woods or hiding out behind the garage. There wasn’t a hint of trouble, but just to be sure, he decided to check the locks on each door one more time. First he checked the front door, then the cellar door, and finally the back door. At each one, he stopped and looked outside, gripped by the cold fear that some horribly mutilated face—maybe something even worse than Dianne’s face—would suddenly slam up against the glass, slobbering and snarling as it glared in at him. He tried to keep such thoughts at bay, but they became increasingly vivid and real in his mind. Even so, he wasn’t prepared for what he saw when he went to the back door window and peeked out into the back yard. His heart literally skipped a beat, and his mind got dizzy for a moment. There, balanced like a fragile egg on the newel post of the porch, was a round, red, wooden croquet ball. Leaning against the post just below the ball was the mallet he had flung aside before opening the door.
“Oh, God! Oh, Jesus—God!”
He backed away from the door until he bumped into the opposite wall. Then his legs gave out from under him. His nerveless hand let go of the knife as he slid slowly to the floor. Every muscle in his body was trembling as he brought his hands up to his face, covered his eyes, and released his pent-up anxiety in a single, long, anguished wail.
Chapter Ten
Removal
Around one o’clock that next afternoon, Dianne was starting to regain consciousness in the recovery room.
As her mind drifted slowly out of the anesthesia-induced fog, her first clear thought was how she had never been more frightened in her life than when they had wheeled her into the operating room before the second operation. Other than Dr. Collett, who had greeted her with a friendly smile before donning his surgical mask, the nameless, surgically-masked, green-clad mass huddling around her had made her extremely nervous. The anesthesiologist had smiled as she administered “just a little squirt” of sodium pentathol, but Dianne thought she had detected a leering, almost wolfish quality in the woman’s eyes.
As she faded away, Dianne had tried to hold on to the thought that everything was going to be all right after this, but in the throes of a drug-induced nightmare, the medical assistants and physicians were transformed into a dangerous, threatening force—a circle of demons with eyes glowing like angry red coals above their masks as they cackled with laughter before sending her spiraling down into the depths of hell. Then there had been simply … nothing. She had plummeted down, deeper and deeper … forever into a bottomless, black hole.
But now, waking up groggily with blurred vision and a distant, pulsating memory of pain, Dianne knew that—no matter what else—her face still wasn’t back to normal, and it wouldn’t be for at least six more months, possibly a year.
Intellectually, she knew and could accept what had happened to her. Before the operation, Dr. Collett had described in graphic, at times gruesome detail the hemicoronal incision they would make from the bridge of her nose up around her hairline and down in front of her ear so he could peel back her facial skin and restore her left cheekbone, using a piece of cancellous bone taken from her hip. An incision underneath the edge of her jaw would allow him to reconstruct the shattered portion of her upper and lower jaw. Using a computer imaging system and what he called a “cephalometric X-ray,” he had explained how they would remove the screws, wires, and metal plates that were holding her jaw and cheek in place, and then apply two types of bone grafts—interpositional and onlays—to rebuild the bony structure of her face. Of course, after this her jaw would be wired shut for another six weeks while it all healed.
Dianne’s biggest concern was that even after all of this was done, she still would not look like herself, that when the operation was over and she was healed and the wires were removed from her teeth, she would look into the mirror and see a person she wouldn’t even recognize. Dr. Collett acknowledged that there obviously was a chance of this happening; he couldn’t guarantee that she would look exactly as she had before her accident, but he reassured her that, by using photographs of her and the intact structure of the right side of her face as guides, he didn’t expect there would be much of a problem in her case. He had warned her, though, that even after this operation, once the swelling went down, her face still would not be back to normal. There would be “some slight soft tissue deficiencies,” he had called them, as well as scarring that would require one more plastic surgery operation before she truly looked like herself again.
If I’m ever going to look like myself again, she thought bitterly. Why did this have to happen to me? It could have happened to anyone, but why me?
The heavy clouds in her mind swirled and parted but didn’t disperse entirely.
How can anyone go through something like this and not be changed? Even if the doctor gets every single detail of my face exactly right, I’ll never be the same person I was … I’ll never be “me” again!
The thought reverberated in her mind like someone banging with a hammer on an oil drum. She struggled hard to get away from it, and once or twice thought she heard a soothing voice, telling her simply to relax, that she was doing just fine; but she couldn’t let go of that single thought as it tugged her once again down … down into the swirling darkness.
I’ll never be me again … I’ll never be me again!
“I—I don’t know who it was! If I knew, then I wouldn’t be so—so—”
Brian cut himself off, but his father finished the sentence for him: “—So nervous about staying home alone right?”
Brian smirked and shrugged as he stared blankly out the side window of the car. They had driven north on Route One and were now moving slowly down Congress Street in Portland, heading to the Maine Medical Center to visit Dianne. On the car seat between them was a bundle of roses, a “Get Well” card they had both signed, and a handful of paperback romance novels his dad had picked up at the Waldenbooks in the mall. All during the drive, Brian had been conscious of the irritating, hypnotic drone of the car’s engine, but that sound had been preferable to conversation—at least to this conversation. He bit his lower lip and wished to hell he had never mentioned to his father what had happened yesterday. He was relieved that—at least—he hadn’t told him everything.
“You know,” his father continued, “a lot of people go fishing out there to the river. There’s a couple of real nice coves I used to fish in as a kid. Actually, we should take an afternoon off sometime soon and do a bit of fishing ourselves.” He sighed and shook his head with frustration. “It’s just that now I’m so damned busy with these house plans and all. You know … I’ll just bet it was someone from town passing by. Maybe it was those kids you told me about.”
“Yeah … probably,” Brian replied, wishing his voice didn’t sound quite so shaky.
They drove along in silence for a while, but then, as he was turning into the hospital parking lot, his father cleared his throat and continued as if there hadn’t been any lapse in their conversation, “If you think it’s a problem, I could talk to Jake Crockett down at the police station about it. He could ask around some and keep an eye open for anything suspicious.”
“Naw!” Brian said. “I don’t think it was anything. I probably imagined the whole thing, anyway.”
But even before he was finished speaking, a wave of chills slithered up his back. There was no way he could have imagined all of it! He certainly hadn’t imagined that red croquet ball out of the brush and up onto the porch post. And he knew damned well that he had thrown his mallet, not leaned it up against the porch railing. No matter what he or his father thought or said, someone had been out there in the back yard watching him at least long enough to see him blast that croquet ball off into the woods. And that someone had retrieved the lost ball and come right up to the house and purposely placed it on the post. The only thing
that gnawed at Brian was, if whoever had done that meant any trouble, if they had wanted to hurt or kill him, they probably wouldn’t have made their presence known in such a subtle, inoffensive way.
Subtle—yes, but scary, too … unnerving. Ever since yesterday afternoon, Brian couldn’t stop wondering: who would have done something like that?
Like his dad said, it had probably been someone just passing by—someone out for a hike in the woods out behind the house or heading down to the river to go fishing or swimming. Someone who certainly hadn’t meant him any harm who had, in fact, helped him out by returning the lost croquet ball.
But who the hell could it have been?
If they were friendly, then why didn’t they reveal themselves? Why play a sneaky little trick like that and then leave?
“Well, I just might mention it to Jake tomorrow, anyway,” his father said, and that seemed to be the end of it. He flipped his turn signal and turned left into the hospital parking lot. He drove past the parking lot attendant’s booth, took a ticket from the automatic machine, then pulled to a stop in an open parking space and shut off the engine. Before getting out of the car, he turned to Brian, placed a hand gently on his shoulder, and said, “Now look here, son. I’m gonna say this for the last time. I don’t expect you to be all that excited about seeing Dianne, but I’m asking you—as a favor to me—to at least be nice to her, all right? Show her a little bit of concern, all right?”
“Sure,” Brian said, feeling his expression tighten. Again, he found that he couldn’t maintain eye contact with his father for very long.
“She’s probably experiencing a lot of pain and worry right now. I shouldn’t have to remind you how—how tough this has all been on her. You’ve got to try and see things from her point of view.”
“Yeah, yeah! I know!”
“I’m just saying, you don’t have to act like you—well, like you really like her, okay? I know you and she haven’t exactly hit it off yet, but just be civil. I’m sure if it was you who’d had such a bad accident, she’d be as concerned about you as your mother would.”
“Don’t worry, all right?” Brian said tightly, but he was thinking, Yeah, I doubt it!
He pulled away from his father’s touch, snapped open the car door, and stepped out into the hot afternoon sun. Heat waves rippled like water up from the baking asphalt. He locked the car door and slammed it shut behind him, shivering in spite of the heat as he looked up at the foreboding building. The old part of the hospital with its brooding, Victorian-era architecture etched in black against the heat-hazed sky towered above him like something straight out of a horror movie. As he and his father crossed the street to the hospital’s main entrance, he couldn’t stop thinking about how truly terrible he expected his stepmother to look.
He tried to push aside the thought, but he couldn’t stop imagining what he might have seen there at the back door yesterday … his stepmother’s mutilated face, pressed flat against the glass, drooling like a rabid dog as she stared in at him, her lips peeled back in a sick mockery of a smile that exposed the network of wires holding her jaw in place. Jagged scars like white bolts of lightning zigzagged across her face, and in her curled, gnarled hand, she held out to him a battered, red croquet ball and hissed, “Wanna play?”
“Hey, how you feeling?” Edward asked as he eased open the heavy door and tiptoed into Dianne’s hospital room with Brian shuffling in a few paces behind him.
Dianne rolled her head to one side and looked up at him, forcing a smile which exposed her wired, discolored teeth. “I’ve been … better,” she rasped.
Edward’s first sight of her sent a jolt of shock and fear racing through him. Her face—at least what little he could see of it beneath the bandages—was as pale as a corpse’s except for around her eyes, where prune-purple bruises as dark as a football player’s greasy eye smudges gave the impression that her eyes were sinking back into her head. A brick-red crust of dried blood streaked from both nostrils to her upper lip. Because of the swelling, her neck looked almost twice as thick as usual. Even her hair, which normally was so full and beautiful, was nothing more than a limp mass of dark brown snarls sticking out from underneath the elastic bandage.
“Well, I hope you’re gonna be feeling a whole lot better real soon,” Edward said. He approached the bed, leaned forward, and kissed her lightly on the forehead. Taking a deep breath and trying his damnedest not to let his reaction show, he sat down on the edge of the bed, forgetting for a moment all about the card, roses, and books he was holding. He cast a quick glance over his shoulder at Brian but didn’t say anything to him as his son shifted over to a corner of the room and leaned against the wall, his arms folded tightly across his chest as if he were standing outside in the winter cold.
Turning back to his wife, Edward said, “Oh. Here—these are for you.” He displayed the roses, bringing them up close to her face so she could take a feeble sniff of their fragrance.
“Umm … They’re … beautiful,” Dianne whispered. “Thanks.”
“Got some books for you, too,” Edward said. “’Course, I don’t expect you’ll be feeling up to reading for a few days.”
He held the paperbacks up to show her the covers, wishing all the while that he didn’t feel so goddamned awkward in front of her. At least for this first time, he thought, maybe it would have been better if Brian had waited outside in the car. Brian certainly wouldn’t have given him any argument, but it was too late to change that now.
“If you’ve—ahh, already read any of these, they said at the store that I can exchange them.”
Dianne nodded but said nothing, obviously wanting to save her voice if she could. Edward put the books and card on the table beside her, then got up and gently laid the roses on the windowsill. “I’ll have to ask the nurses about getting a vase or something to put these in, huh?”
As soon as his back was turned to her, a cold, clinging tightness filled his chest. In the back of his mind, he was hoping that it had just been the initial shock of seeing Dianne that had made her look so bad; but when he turned around and looked at her again, he couldn’t deny—even with the most optimistic outlook that he could muster—that she looked like hell. Dr. Collett had warned him about the bleeding, the swelling, and the discoloration, but—Christ on a cross!—she looked as bad, maybe even worse than the day she fell off the cliff!
He sat back down on the edge of the bed and took her hand into his, giving it a gentle but bracing squeeze. His stomach did a sour little flip when he thought about how cold and lifeless her returning grip was—as if in the operation the doctors had removed the bones from her hands.
“Hey, Brian. Why don’t you come on over here and say hi—” Edward said, turning and waving him to the bed.
Brian took a few tentative steps forward as if he were walking through a field of armed bear traps, then stopped halfway between the bed and the wall. He nodded curtly and said, “I umm, I hope you’re feeling better soon.”
“Right now … I feel like … a piece of … homemade shit,” Dianne said, her voice barely above a whisper. The corners of her mouth twitched into what was supposed to be a smile, but even to Edward it looked like a silent shriek of pain. Brian looked as though he was about to say something more, but then he shrugged, backed away, and resumed his position with his back against the wall. Edward didn’t know whether to be shocked at Dianne’s crassness or happy at her attempt at some humor. Finally, he attributed her loose language to the effects of the pain medication she was on and tried to put it out of his mind.
“Oh, by the way,” he said, “I’ve got some dynamite news for you.”
A warm current of excitement filled him, but it was tempered as Dianne stared up at him with hooded eyes; it obviously took a great deal of effort for her to keep her gaze focused on him.
“You know how hard we were working with the Cliffords, for that new house.”
Dianne made a slight grunting noise as she nodded.
“Well, the
y got approved by the bank and we’ve agreed on a price for the whole deal. They’ve got the lot right there on the corner of Pond Road and Stackpole—the farthest one from our house, actually. We’ll be closing the deal in a day or two and can start work on it anytime after that.”
Dianne’s eyes flickered as she looked up at him. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. Edward honestly couldn’t tell if she was trying to respond or if the motion was involuntary.
“God, sometimes I had the feeling it would never happen, but—well, it looks like we’re in business. Isn’t that great? They want to meet with us tonight to finalize some of the last details on the house plan, so I figure after we sign those contracts, I can start clearing the land in a couple of days. Pretty exciting, huh?”
He still had hold of her hand and, in his excitement, gave it a tight squeeze.
“What do you think?”
Dianne moved her lips, apparently trying to say something; but before she could, her throat made a strange clicking sound as if she were gagging. She grabbed the plastic bowl from her bed stand and lurched forward just as her stomach convulsed. A bright wash of bloody vomit came squirting out between the wires in her mouth and splashed into the pan.
Surprise and panic slammed through Edward. He watched, immobilized for a moment as Dianne vomited into the bowl. The only sounds in the room were the strangled, bubbly noises issuing from her throat and the splattering blood. Once Edward was sure she wasn’t choking, he dashed into the bathroom, wet a washcloth with cold water, and returned, handing it to her. Dianne wiped her face as best she could and, as soon as the convulsions were past, eased her head back onto the pillow. Edward flushed the contents of the pan down the toilet.
“Jeeze, honey,” he said, as he came back to the bed and took the pink-stained cloth from her. “Do you think I should call the nurse?”
Dianne shook her head. “No … That’s the … third time … today,” she whispered. “Doctor says it’s … normal.”
